Bridgetown, Issue #1: Arrival (16 page)

Sheldon grumbled. At last, he seemed to be
capitulating. "I'll have to talk to my secretary―"

"Listen," Wayne barked. "You're inhaling my
profits. My money. Get it together. This is supposed to be a
partnership."

Sheldon said nothing.

Wayne slammed the door behind him on his way
out. Eventually, he was going to need a solution to the problem of
Edsel Sheldon.

* * *

Jesse looked up at the ranch house. The
peculiars of its geometry no longer seemed merely odd. They seemed
like heresy.

Was it possible, as Black insisted, that
Wayne was willing to sacrifice the future for his own short-sighted
gain? Could he possibly be that callous? Jesse and he had their
differences, sure, but the wholesale eradication of civilization as
they knew it was another game entirely.

Surely Wayne had reason to believe, in his
mind, that Black was crazy. Whatever future "facts" Black had
presented in his telegrams must've been the kind of thing Wayne
could have dismissed as the ramblings of a crackpot. Jesse had
experienced how difficult it was to discern future events in his
vision. Maybe Black had simply gotten the details wrong.

Jesse rang the intercom buzzer, and Martha
let him in. He entered the foyer, and found Susanna was on the
opposite end, watching him with a cautious distance.

"You're okay," she said. She sounded
surprised. "What happened?"

"I spoke to Black."

"You did what?"

"I went to their camp. The Lotus Boys. I
spoke to Black, their leader."

"Why the hell would you do something like
that?"

Jesse thought about this. "I felt it might be
valuable."

"And he just, what, let you come back
here?"

Jesse walked the distance across the expanse
of the foyer to be near her. "Susanna, we're going to have to
leave. We don't belong here."

"That nutcase gave you his bullshit about
Pandora's Box, didn't he?"

"He's not crazy, Susanna. I—" he searched for
the right phrase, but there was no sane-sounding euphemism for what
he needed to communicate. "He showed me the future. I saw it with
my own eyes. The factory, the company, all of it—you're moving
things forward too fast. The world's not ready for the knowledge
you're about to unleash."

"If us changing things was going to destroy
the future, we'd have already disappeared. Jesse, advancing the
world doesn't just mean the bad stuff. Think about what we can do
with disease prevention. Eradication of polio, whatever else. We've
put too much blood, sweat, and tears into this company to give up
on what we can achieve here."

"But Black can help us get back." Jesse
stopped himself. He felt strangely embarrassed, for he'd
accidentally let slip a secret truth he'd rather hide behind more
altruistic goals.

An odd clacking sound came down the hall now.
Jesse turned, and saw the perfectly angelic vision of Wayne Junior,
walking at his father's side. The strange noise was the sound of a
leg brace like the kind polio victims wore—W.J.'s leg brace.

It impacted in counter to
each step he made with his good leg. Jesse found himself unable to
make sense of this pathetic sight at first. The boy had been fine
just yesterday, when Jesse had first seen him with his mother by
the side of his...
bed
.

Of course. He's had no reason to suspect the
boy was sick.

Wayne and Jesse locked eyes. "Go see your
mother," Wayne told the boy. "Your uncle and I have some words to
exchange."

Susanna took W.J. in her arms, and set his
miniature crutch along the wall. She carried the boy outside,
through the front door.

Jesse watched them leave the room. Martha
shut the front door behind them.

"I suppose I never told you," Wayne said.

Jesse turned to face him, but said
nothing.

Wayne went on. "I overheard what you were
saying to my wife just now."

"And?"

"I just don't understand it, Jesse. I take
you in, I give you a bed, and food. You're my own brother. And
first chance you get, you go out to the middle of the desert where
a bunch of radical gangsters eke out a miserable, hateful
existence, and you...I don't know, come back babbling about the
future." He paced across the foyer. "Now that I hear myself saying
it, it sounds exactly like you. I've lived another half a decade,
but you haven't changed a day."

"Wayne, for God's sake, we went into a molten
hole in the Earth and got spat out seventy years into our own past.
That's the reality of the world now. You can't just take advantage
of that shit when it's convenient for you, and go on being ignorant
when it hurts your bottom line."

"Oh, I see. Of course. Of course you're gonna
cast me as the big, bad businessman. I'm The Man. I'm Tricky Dick
Nixon. I'm the robber-baron. And you're, what, exactly? Robin Hood
with a touch of beatnik?"

"You're taking, taking,
taking, because you think things weren't fair in your old life. And
now you're Mr. Moneybags, just because you learned how to build a
radio when you were a kid, so now you're gonna just steal other
people's ideas and, fuck it, cause a nuclear war in the meanwhile!
But who cares, right? Because it wasn't fair how the world treated
you back then, so now, it's
look out,
everyone, the Wayne train is pulling into Asshole
Station—
"

"You think this is just about making money
for me, Jesse? Take a look at my son," he punctuated this last word
with a finger pointed out the front door. "He can't walk. He'll
never be able to walk right. This world is harsh on all of us. But
he wouldn't be able to even survive in it. Medicine won't fix him,
it's too late for that. But money can fix him, Jesse. Money can
level the playing field."

Jesse shook his head. He spat at Wayne's
feet, oblivious to how closely he was echoing the mayor's gesture
just an hour before, and went down the hall to the room that had
been provided to him.

He sat in the guest room for a long while
after that. Nobody came to disturb him. Five years of absence and
it was like both Wayne and more painfully, Susanna, would have just
as well had it he'd never returned.

He looked out the window as the shadows grew
long and the sky a deep purple. On the lawn of the estate, Susanna
and Wayne played with Wayne Jr.

Watching them, Jesse understood how his
sudden presence in this place had been an intrusion. Of course he
was trouble. Of course he was a disruption.

Martha called supper and the Cole family came
in from outside. Martha came around to Jesse's quarters and asked
if we would be joining them that evening; Jesse declined the
invitation.

There was a quill pen on the desk, and a
small supply of paper inside. He began to draft a letter, and he
was overcome with a feeling of deja vu. He'd seen this moment
before, when Black had granted him the ability to peer into days
yet unlived. Except that this time, the words on the page were
perfectly visible to him.

Dear Susanna,

I know my arrival has been disruptive to you
and your family, especially in this time that requires you be
intensely focused on your professional success. For that I am
sorry.

In pursuing the opportunities that knowledge
of future events has given both of you, you have lost sight of what
once brought us all together and made us happy.

I still love you, Susanna. And I am willing
to fight for you.

Even if it doesn't make sense right now, I
am confident that you will one day see things my way. Wayne, on the
other hand, I do not know if I can convince him. But I am willing
to try.

I will fight to get back the future we once
had. I can promise you that.

Love forever,

Jesse

He sealed the envelope and left the room, as
quietly as he could. Laughter echoed from down the hall.

Jesse exited out the back of the ranch house,
walked to the garage, and placed the letter on the seat of the Mark
II.

Then he took the tarp off his Jeep, inserted
the key into the ignition, and brought the engine to life. He
pulled out of the garage. Just as the sun was falling behind the
desert, he began the trek back to Black's camp.

When he got there, he was given passage to
the leader's inner sanctum.

When Jesse entered his tent, Black was
working on a cigar. Jesse reached for his own pack of cigarettes,
but remembered he was fresh out. Without having to say a thing,
Black offered him a cigar.

Jesse lit it with his Zippo. "Thanks."

Black's knowing expression was not lost on
Jesse. "I take it you had about as much success with them as I
did," the man said.

"I don't begrudge you for what you have to
do," Jesse replied. "But you won't be killing Susanna—I'll see to
it that she comes with me, one way or another."

"You realize," Black said, with a puff of his
cigar, "She may learn to hate you."

Jesse watched the tip of his cigar slowly
burn away. "Let me ask you something, Black. I saw something, in my
future. At first it didn't make much sense, but then I got to
thinking. What we need is a people's revolt. We need to show the
people of Bridgetown that Cole Company doesn't have their best
interests at heart, no matter how many jobs and shiny toys Wayne
promises to bring with that factory. And where I come from, there's
no better way to talk to the people than through the screen."

Black's eyes lit up. "You're talking about a
propaganda picture." He blew a smoke ring. "I might know just the
man who can help."

4.

Susanna's alarm clock woke her at 4:30 AM, just as
it had every weekday for the past year and a half. She threw on her
work outfit, from her bloomers to her oil-stained denim jumpsuit.
Then she scarfed down her steel-cut oats, topped with strawberries
she'd picked from the ranch. These rituals had provided the makeup
of her morning routine since ground was first broken on the
factory. She liked it this way, for anytime before the sun rose,
Susanna didn't much care for surprises. Besides, the simple
repetition meant her mind was freed up for more meaningful
pursuits. This morning, most of her thoughts were with Jesse.

Was Wayne awake? She tiptoed to their bedroom
to find out. No, he was still snoring. She proceeded towards
Jesse's room, and put her hand to the knob, not quite sure what she
was hoping would happen.

She cracked the door open, just a few inches,
and peered into the room.

Jesse wasn't there. He hadn't made himself
seen or heard at all the prior evening. At the time, Susanna had to
admit, this had given her a bit of relief. She'd figured he was
just having a drink in town. Now, though, a knot of worry formed
high in her stomach.

She considered using the room's guest phone
to dial Sheriff White at his office, but something held her back.
Susanna tried to brush various concerning scenarios out of her
mind. The gnawing sort of thought that usually meant she was
dead-on accurate clung to her, though. In this case, it was her
concern that Jesse had gone back to Black.

Jesse wasn't on the patio, in the barn, or in
the garage when she checked. But it was in that last location, on
the driver's seat of the Mark II, that Susanna found a letter
sealed shut with the crest of her own estate in red wax.

She tore it open, and read it three times.
She could have allowed herself to feel sad, concerned, or angry,
but she did not allow herself to linger on such feelings. She had a
job to do, and she would be strong. She would keep her priorities
in line until Jesse eventually, inevitably, returned from wherever
he'd run off to.

Susanna put her keys in the ignition and
started up the car. She backing out of the garage and took off down
the small path towards the main road beyond the gates. The sun was
beginning to crest over the horizon, and she didn't like getting to
the factory after sunup.

Jesse's actions confounded her. Was it
stupidity? A petulant desire to make her worry about him? Should
she even worry about him?

Maybe she was the foolish one. Maybe Jesse
had every right to want out, seeing her with Wayne. For the first
time, she considered the full weight of how difficult Wayne's
sudden business success must have been for Jesse. His whole life,
he'd been the cool brother, after all. And now, he was an outcast.
He knew nothing about this place, had nothing to his name. No
status. Even if Susanna hadn't been a factor at all, it would have
been one hell of a horse pill to swallow.

Her attention snapped back to the here and
now—to the factory. The scorched crater where the Lotus Boys had
pierced the outer wall with dynamite days earlier was still
visible. This was not supposed to be the case. Just yesterday,
there'd been a temporary fence erected around it, to keep out
prying eyes. A bit of face-saving, to at the least obscure the
embarrassment. But worse, the hole should have been fixed by now.
Why wasn't it fixed?

Susanna careened into a staging of flattened
earth, soon to be paved into a parking lot. Then she exited the
vehicle, and stormed through the double doors that led to the
factory floor.

The enormous interior of the factory was akin
to that of an airship hangar, so cavernous that it generated its
own weather system. Those who were installing lighting near the
catwalk-latticed ceiling found it almost unbearably humid, while at
the floor it was cool. Breezy, even—courtesy of the unfortunate
boat-sized hole punched in the wall.

Susanna's eyes were locked onto this
yet-to-be-rectified embarrassment. Each stomp she took towards
twisted metal and scorched cinderblocks was a proclamation of her
supreme displeasure.